Pointing It Out To You!!! Stag Season

The weather is getting ready to change, the cocks all look like some foreign species that kind of resemble what you would get if you bred in some porcupine into your breeding program. The stags are looking good and with cooler weather at night they are also acting well. Baby stags are showing their first signs of pairing off and the older stags are either already penned, or you are looking for the final signs that it is time to start doing so.

Diseases are a bit more rampant because as the weather changes, there are more perfect conditions for Roup (common cold), or Bronchitis, or Coryza, or Cholera, CRD or whatever else the wild migrating birds bring us every year(as you may have guessed, I hate this time of year). If you drop the ball now, it is a slow recovery, for when the season really breaks. So, stay diligent in your routine care and treatment.

In the next month or so, the Stag Derbies will commence. This is a time to test stock to make sure that you made the right breeding choices back last winter. There will be nickle spur or dime spur competitions and while we all want to make sure that we are on the right track for the upcoming season, there are things we should all remember.

Stags are crazy by nature - the mental capacity of these birds is like working with teenage boys. I always equate the mindset of a bird in human terms. One month of life to a bird is basically the same as a year of life to a man. Their mentality is pretty spot on if you look at how they act. I have found that free ranged birds mature faster than those kept in pens so please factor that into your evaluation.

Thus said, that 10 month old stag is just like a 10 year old boy. Can he be sexually active? Sure he can, but normally in my experience that stag would spar with a pullet rather than top her. Yes, some breeds mature faster, but most would rather beat themselves to death rather than have you touch one feather on their developing heads.

When choosing stags for a derby, I normally pick up 2 for 1 - so this means for a 4-stag competition, I pick 8-10 birds and put them into fly pens at least 3 weeks before derby date. Every day I throw a pullet in with them just long enough for him to top her. If the stag ever buckles on her, out he goes, because he is not mature enough. As I feed these babies, I keep things as natural as possible, NO HORMONES, just a simple rotation consisting of good feed and vitamins. If they are going to stress out on you (develop a stress rattle) you will normally see this after the 10th day of your rotation. I don’t hand work them much, rather a simple rotation from flypen to cord using different fillers - shucks, leaves, sand, dried horse manure…all provide different muscles to move. I have also had success with side-by-side run pens. I only spar once a week in order to prevent stress. All the while you have to keep an eye to make sure those spurs are still within the perimeter needed for whatever derby you are attending. Point them naturally and do not use any stimulants on them on the day of competition, because like I said at the start, stags are crazy, and they don’t need anything to flip that switch. Remember this is nothing more than a way to test your birds, to get an idea of what you have coming up for the following season.

Now let’s address the elephant in the room, people that cheat in a stag derby are lowlifes that are not roostermen, rather desperate gamblers trying to take advantage of the system. I have little use for a son of a bitch that would cheat in this competition and God knows, I’ve seen a few and run quite a few off back in the day. Tests are a good indicator of what you have to look forward to but only if the test is fairly done.

One last bit of advice, do not over-heel these birds. I have found that coordination is still developing in these young birds, and you can be promoting their own suicide if they are over-heeled.

There are some sketchy ways to pass off an older bird as a legitimate entry, filing and hot potatoes have been used for years, make sure the man running this event has some knowledge of what to look for in this regard. Good Luck and have fun.

Quick Story For Ya:

We owned Little Sunset in Sunset, LA for years, I had 2 terrific partners in the day-to-day operation of this pit. Raymond Melancon and Dale Barras ran a clean pit. We ran Stag Derbies in the early part of the season. One year, I was walking through from the kitchen towards the cockhouses and heard Raymond and some man yelling at each other. The man finally left the cockhouse in a flurry of curses and slammed doors. He came up to me as I was about mid-pit thinking I would overrule Raymond’s judgement on the eligibility of his stags, and I listened politely as he told me his tale of how honest he was and painting me a rosy picture. Raymond was fuming as I listened to him. I walked with him back to his cockhouse. I turned to Raymond after the man finished, and Raymond said, “He had the same stags last year”. My eyes widened as he further explained, that when examining the birds the year before, he had noted a defect in one of the bird’s prop toe that was pretty rare. That same bird was in his show for this year. “I guarantee you, that’s the oldest stag in the world”.

I burst out laughing along with the rest of the cockers assembled as the man hung his head and slipped away. It pays to have good staff.

Keep ‘em crowing